


as if from a great height

by astrogeny



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Gen, bad future timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-30
Updated: 2015-04-30
Packaged: 2018-03-26 10:29:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3847549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrogeny/pseuds/astrogeny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The wyvern shrieks again, an anguished, high-pitched keen that makes Gerome’s teeth ring.  He knows the cry for certain, now, and wishes with every fiber of his being that he did not.  Minerva must be injured, to scream so.  Minerva must be injured, he repeats to himself, vertigo making his head light as if he were standing at a great height and being forced to look down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	as if from a great height

**Author's Note:**

> shameless, shameless bad timeline weepypasta. i’ve had this image of young gerome and a riderless, frenzied minerva in my head for a long while–i put him at 11 or so, here. i am making up a whole lotta bs abt wyvern biology, tho i tried to at least make it sound plausibly reptilian. also my dad bias sneaks in yet again, tho it’s not?? too overt. anyway, here’s weepypastawall

It takes Gerome some time to register that the muffled sounds he’s hearing are wyvern cries.  He is kept inside more often as of late, behind layers of stone walls with other children.  A pragmatist’s voice (his father’s) notes they would have nowhere to run, when the Risen break in.  The wyvern cries out again, and Gerome strains to hear over the hiccuping sobs of the boy sitting closest to him.  

“Hush,” he hisses impatiently.  The other boy, head and shoulders taller than him, puts a knuckle to his quivering lips and bites down, hard.  Gerome must remind himself that none of these children have ever seen a wyvern–or at least, one with a live rider instead of a Risen, half-decayed under the weight of its own armor.  It must be Minerva, then, with no other wyverns left to land at this fort.  An impulsive giddiness fills him, one he comes back to without fail, for all he knows it will hurt him.  His mother and father stay less and less by his side, and he has yet to convince himself entirely that he can carry himself in their absence.  Still, he runs for the gates.

When there are no sentries at their posts, a panicked thrill runs its way down Gerome’s chest, involuntary.  He can hear voices–adults–shouting, and wonders briefly if he’s simply run into a battle.  He’ll make a poor Risen should he die, he thinks with a sense of queasy detachment.  The wyvern shrieks again, an anguished, high-pitched keen that makes Gerome’s teeth ring.  He knows the cry for certain, now, and wishes with every fiber of his being that he did not.  Minerva must be injured, to scream so.  Minerva must be injured, he repeats to himself, vertigo making his head light as if he were standing at a great height and being forced to look down.  

He steps into the courtyard and smells blood.  A soldier catches sight of him and flings her arm out, as if to ward him off and protect him from something else all at once.

“Stay back, child,” she warns uncertainly.  The Ylissean soldiers have never quite known how to refer to him, the quiet son of a deposed noble who has never seen the land meant to be his.  

“My mother,” Gerome begins, in a low mumble.  He is speaking less these days–in part because there is no one to speak to, in part out of fear that his voice will abruptly fluctuate from a boy’s to some sad approximation of a man’s.  

“They’ve a wyvern gone mad out there,” the soldier tries again, not understanding him.  She speaks slowly and clearly wants to sound gentle, but her eyes are wide.  "The beast will tear you apart, lad.  Run along back inside, won’t you?“

"No beast,” he insists, marginally louder this time, though no more helpful.  Minerva screams again, and he has a sudden vision of some other soldier putting a lance through her proud neck.  "My mother, that wyvern is my mother’s mount.“  He rushes the words out in one breath, prays she doesn’t hear him falter on the last syllable.  Though she tries to hide it, the soldier’s countenance falls.

"Go back inside,” she repeats.  There is no command behind the words.  Gerome pushes past her with hardly any resistance–how ungentlemanly, a lightly teasing voice (his mother’s) chides at the back of his head.  He has a sudden difficulty recalling the sound of her voice and wants nothing more than to hear it again, just to be sure.

Minerva is hunched on the ground in front of the gates, supporting herself on one wing, the other torn and dangling uselessly at her side.  A handful of soldiers jab at the air before her with lances, none of them skilled or brave enough to get within striking range.  Her armor is heavily dented, the tassels along her neck mostly torn off, and there is blood seeping from the gaps between her long teeth.  Dark green blood–her blood, mixed in with red that could be from any other creature.  No one sits in her saddle.  

“Minerva,” Gerome croaks, as if she could hear him over the cries of the soldiers and her own pained screeching.  He stumbles forward a few steps, his senses in a sudden, shocked overdrive.  "Minerva,“ again, nearly tripping into a run, only peripherally aware of the soldiers calling him back as he pumps his legs with a dazed fervor.  Minerva either doesn’t recognize him or simply doesn’t care, head darting forward with the deadly speed of a dying animal in a corner, teeth closing inches above the top of his head.  Gerome grasps blindly for her reins, suddenly unable to see in anything but a blur.  His hands close around leather and he pulls with all his body’s weight.  It barely registers on Minerva, who thrashes with a renewed fervor.  "Minerva!”  Gerome cries, hearing his own voice crack, loud and childish and plaintive.  He gives one more pull, overbalancing and falling to his knees in the process.  

A rumble dies in Minerva’s chest, so close that Gerome can hear her lungs shudder.  Her neck curls back around to look at him properly this time, her bright eyes coming back into focus.  He clings still to her reins, though she could kill him with one snap of her jaws, even wounded so.  She brings her snout up to his chest, tongue darting in and out of her mouth to take in his smell.  Gerome finds himself wondering if wyverns can cry, if this is something he would have ever had cause to ask his mother.  Minerva raises her good wing with a snap and folds it over the two of them as best she can, shuffling awkwardly on her haunches to accommodate Gerome.  He lets himself lean forward to press his cheek against the scales of her underbelly.  He’s shaking, but he feels it from far away, somewhere not quite within himself.  There is blood on his face, humid on his skin.  Minerva makes another noise, this time a soft, gurgling trill.  A mother’s noise, Gerome thinks, though he has no reason to be so sure.  Quietly as he can, running one hand over the top of Minerva’s snout over and over again, Gerome begins to cry.


End file.
